The vortex blazed overhead, crackling with a cold orange light that seemed to split the sky into pieces as Coyote and I raced forward. I felt a deep sense of dread, but I couldn't afford to let it overtake me. We were so close, and we couldn't stop now.
"Rai-chan, is it just me or is that thing getting further and further away from us?" I asked, feeling a strange sense of unease at the distance between us and the vortex.
Rai-chan's voice buzzed in my head, tense with urgency. "You're not imagining things. It's... been moving."
A low groan echoed through the air, and the ground seemed to vibrate, the shattered pavement quivering and shifting as something massive moved beneath it.
"I don't like the look of this, Rai-chan," I muttered.
A haunting blue glow suddenly pierced through the darkness, revealing the devastation around us with an eerie light as we raced down the shattered highway. The ground trembled beneath our feet, and the noisy groans grew louder with each passing moment. They were accompanied by a cacophony of scraping and tearing sounds that echoed through the desolate landscape.
Then, a bloodcurdling howl filled the air, and the blue glow intensified, exposing a monstrous creature emerging from a torn portal on the side of the road. It was a grotesque fusion of lizard and dog, standing at a towering height of 10 feet. Its pulsing blue eyes radiated an otherworldly light while its teeth looked like a lamprey's.
With a vicious snarl, the creature lunged forward, its massive scythe-like tail thrashing toward Coyote's mech.
"Ai — Wo kao!" Coyote shouted over the comms, sliding out of the creature's way and firing a barrage of shots at the creature's head from his shoulder cannons.
The shots splattered harmlessly against its scales, and the creature roared again, rearing up to attack with a sickle-like blade that extended from its arm.
The skilled pilot narrowly escaped death by ducking and rolling out of harm's way, his mech's boosters blazing as he raced away from the ferocious monster, desperate to put some distance between them.
The creature roared in frustration, lunging forward after Coyote's mech, its teeth gnashing angrily. Its claws gouged furrows into the asphalt, tearing through the concrete and sending debris flying. I quickly yanked a lever, aiming my shoulder cannons at the creature and firing a quick barrage of shots that pinged harmlessly off its scales.
The creature showed no fear, turning to face me and showing its sharp teeth. It pounced towards me, causing me to pull back on the controls and desperately try to maintain balance. The beast's jaws snapped just inches from my cockpit, and my heart raced with the intensity of just trying to survive.
Coyote zoomed towards me in his mech, firing off rounds from the arm cannons and pushing the creature back. Its tail whipped around, unleashing a burst of blue light that exploded into a cloud of energy and left behind a trail of blue smoke as I swerved off the road to avoid it.
I was about to move back in with my mech's built-in beam sword when a sharp flash of light caught my eye. Coyote sharply turned on the road, flattening his mech on the ground, and I cringed out of reflex as a bright projectile slammed into the chaos beast that'd attacked us. One second, the monster was there, and the next, it exploded in a shower of blue energy.
"Sheesh. A crack shot as ever," Coyote breathed, pulling up beside me. I looked behind us down the highway, spotting a rapidly approaching green light. Falcon was following us from afar and must have taken out the chaos beast attacking us.
"Well, you two are looking worse for wear," she said, crackling over the comms.
"It's been a rough few minutes," I admitted, glancing back at the creature's remains. "That thing was huge."
Coyote grunted in agreement. "Had to be at least Viscount class. Not sure what we're up against, but we have to keep pushing forward. The city's in danger."
Rai-chan suddenly crackled over the comms with an urgent warning.
"Sparky! We have another problem up ahead."
I squinted through the haze, feeling a chill run down my spine.
"What is it, Rai-chan? I can barely see anything."
Her voice crackled in my ear, tense and urgent. "I mean, er. Not ahead, look up."
I jerked the mech's cameras up and felt my breath catch at what I saw.
It was a 30-foot-tall monstrosity, barely visible from a distance but conspicuous now that we were close to the orange vortex. It was a mockery of a faceless human man with a glitchy, pixelated body like something out of a broken video game. Its body was massive and distorted, and its legs were twisted and crooked, and it had shadowy tentacle-like tendrils in place of hair. It was in the middle of the vortex, curled up in a fetal position like the vortex was some sort of placenta.
Coyote swore over the comms. "I've never seen anything like that before. What the hell is it?"
I could only stare in horror at the creature. It radiated a sense of malice that made my skin crawl, and I couldn't even respond.
As I stared at the creature in front of us, Rai-chan crackled to life in my ear again, her voice filled with urgency.
"Sparky, Listen to me. Get in close, and don't do anything too risky while I try to perform an Analysis. Don't get too close, just enough for me to get a fix on it. I have a bad feeling about this."
I gulped, my eyes sweeping over the eerie field of blue portals appearing and disappearing rapidly in the air around us. There was a constant hissing, crackling sound, like static electricity.
"I-if you're sure," I stuttered.
I glanced over at Coyote, who'd followed me out here. This was looking like a suicide mission, but only for one of us. I was pretty certain he was out here in person while I had the luxury of being in a drone.
"Look, this thing is way out of my pay grade," Coyote chuckled through the comms, tense and edged with adrenaline as he withdrew his mech's blade. "But I'm gonna do my job if it kills me. Let's go."
"Coyote? Are you sure you want to go with me on this one?" I asked. "I'm probably going to have to get within five international yards of that thing."
"As they say at home — we're in for half a catty, eight taels, either way," he commented non-chalantly.
The creature suddenly started to morph and twist, its limbs elongating and contorting with sickening pops and crackles. It began to take on a different shape, a twisted humanoid form that rose to its feet with a low, guttural hiss.
"What in the world is that thing?!" Falcon shouted over the comms, finally pulling up at our rear.
I couldn't tear my eyes away from the creature hovering in the vortex ahead of us, feeling my chest tighten with a sense of primal fear and awe. Its face was a mass of shadow tendrils that wriggled and twisted through the air, and its chest glowed with a ghostly blue light even as more of the shadowy tendrils erupted. Its arms were elongated and spindly, and its fingers were tipped with shadowy gloves. Its skin seemed to pulsate, rippling with strange patterns and glowing energy veins.
But that wasn't the worst part.
It was… familiar. Before I'd arrived at the battlefield in the drone, I had been briefly pulled into a nightmarish mindscape. I couldn't be sure, but its color scheme and the way its face was pixelated was eerily similar to the entity I'd seen in there.
I shook my head out of habit, trying to keep myself from panicking as I thought about my surreal experience from earlier.
"Rai-chan... I don't have much to base that off of, but the entity in that freaky mind space has more than just a passing resemblance to... whatever the fuck I encountered when I transmitted my consciousness into the drone."
Rai-chan paused briefly before her human avatar appeared on my screen with a flash.
"Are you sure? What can you tell me about what you encountered?" she asked, her eyes narrowing.
I swallowed, trying to get a grip on my emotions.
"The... entity. It was a shadowy mass. It could twist itself into different forms. Like a human form, but... it was massive. Biblically massive. There was a pixelated, glitchy effect around it, which isn't present with this thing here, but it had shadowy tendrils sprouting out of it like some kind of twisted tree. The same ones I'm seeing on this creature."
I paused, looking back and forth between the entity ahead of us and Rai-chan's avatar.
"If that's the case, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that they're one and the same. But I have no idea how to confirm it. Or what they want. But whatever it is, it's bad news," Rai-chan's avatar stroked her chin, her expression grim.
"If you're sure then, Ikki, then we need to get as much info as possible from that creature," she said with a serious look crossing her face. "Don't get too close while I analyze it — be careful not to let that monster hit you with anything. While I'm fairly confident that you won't get sucked away from me this time now that I'm vigilant for the possibility, we still don't know what it's capable of."
"I know, I know. I get it. But how are we supposed to get close enough to do an Analysis, exactly? Frankly I'm terrified."
"Well, that's the tricky part," she muttered, her avatar looking down briefly.
"What are you thinking?" I asked.
She frowned. "I think we're only going to have one shot at this," she said. "It's also important to note that our friends out here in the real world, Coyote and Falcon, are physically here. While we are piloting this drone, they have the distinct disadvantage of being here physically."
I nodded in agreement. We couldn't be too reckless and do something that would get the two pilots with us killed.
"So what's the plan? Straight line? Stay together? Circle around it?"
She sighed. "It's an open road and field. No way to get fancy. I say we stay together and punch through. It might be our only option to get the intel we need."
I stopped glancing to my sides as Falcon and Coyote flanked me. Sure, we could try and charge through, but if all these rifts started opening up, my escorts would face a horrifying and painful death.
"Falcon. Coyote," I stated, activating my radio as I edged my mech closer to the vortex. "I need to get close to that thing, but as you can see, it looks like a death trap. So, I suggest you cover me from afar if you can."
There was a brief silence over the comms before Falcon responded. "Heh. Ordering us around, huh? Roger that, kid. I've got your back. Just be careful."
Coyote's voice crackled over the comms. "Copy that. Don't be a hero. Just... do what you need to do and get out. If anything starts feeling fuckity at all in your head, just eject - you hear, Sparky? I'm not all that experienced, but things get fucky with these things. We've dealt with some funky mind fuckers before, too."
I nodded, feeling a sense of resolve wash over me. It was time to do this.
I yanked a lever Rai-chan highlighted for me on the screen, and my mech's boosters roared to life. The wind whipped past me as I accelerated forward, feeling the adrenaline pumping through my veins as the creature loomed ahead.
As we neared the creature, the air began to crackle and hiss with energy. The ground seemed to tremble beneath us, and I could feel a strange buzzing in my head again, like static electricity.
Suddenly, a blue portal opened before me, and I slammed on the brakes, narrowly avoiding a creature Rai-chan identified as an 'ayakashi' pouring forth from it.
Its face was a twisted mass of shadow and teeth, its eyes glowing with a ghostly light. It lashed out with a long, spindly, shadowy 'tongue' tipped with black spikes, and I jerked back on the controls, barely avoiding the deadly barb.
A thunderous boom echoed through the air, and the creature exploded in a shower of blue light as a volley of shots from behind me tore through it, leaving a smoking crater on the ground.
Another portal opened nearby, and I dodged to the side as another scorpion-like creature surged forth, its glowing eyes fixed on me. I raised my mech's arm cannon and fired off a barrage of shots, sending the creature reeling back.
An explosion rocked the ground, and I felt the shockwave slam into me, nearly knocking me off my feet. I quickly reoriented the mech and looked up just in time to see Coyote's mech racing along the road, firing shots from his arm cannons at the scorpion creature I'd just been fighting. Falcon was perched on top of a large boulder off the road, aiming her railgun at the rifts surrounding me.
I took advantage of the chaos to race forward, keeping my eye on the creature ahead. It was hovering in the vortex, its arms stretched out as if beckoning me forward.
"Sparky! Be careful! There's something coming!" Rai-chan's voice crackled in my ear.
"What are you talking about?" I asked, trying to focus on the creature ahead of me.
"There's an enormous mana signature approaching us. It's roughly 30 Earth kilometers out west and approaching at Mach 1. I don't know if it's hostile or friendly."
"Great, just what we need now," Falcon commented surly.
I glanced up at the sky but couldn't see anything except the swirling vortex. —30 kilometers out west at Mach 1? That means it'd arrive in less than three minutes.
"Okay... so what do you want me to do?" I radioed.
"We need to hurry. If it's hostile, it is definitely not something a trio of Aeolus-class mechs can handle. We need to get you close enough for me to analyze it and get out before it reaches us."
I nodded, pushing down on the accelerator and charging forward. The creature ahead of me began to twist and morph, its limbs elongating and twisting into a long, shadowy mass that rose into the air.
"Sparky! Look out!" Rai-chan shouted.
Another portal opened to my right, and I quickly jerked the controls, swerving to the side as another chaos beast emerged, its body a mass of shadow and teeth towering above me.
Its eyes glowed with a ghostly light, and its shadowy tongue lashed out toward me. I ducked to the side, narrowly avoiding the deadly attack, and slammed on the brakes as another one of Falcon's railgun shots exploded in a burst of energy, sending the creature reeling back.
But I didn't have time to celebrate. An explosion rocked the ground, sending me flying. My mech flipped through the air, and I frantically yanked on the controls, struggling to regain my balance.
Suddenly, a sharp blast of wind slammed into me, and my mech slammed into the ground, skidding across the pavement and leaving a trail of sparks.
The creature in the vortex loomed over me, its shadowy form twisting and writhing as it raised its hands. Its fingers were tipped with curved black claws, and I could feel a strange buzzing in my head, like static electricity.
"Ikki, I've got a lock on the creature now. It's... complicated." Rai-chan stated in front of me.
"What do you mean, complicated?"
"It's an amalgam of several different entities. Possibly more than what I'm detecting. I'm going to need time to analyze it and figure out what's going on."
"Well, I think that might be a problem," I said, my eyes darting up at the creature looming over me.
Its face was a mass of shadow tendrils that writhed and twisted in the air, and its chest glowed with a ghostly blue light even as it raised its arms out. The earth itself shook as it settled on the ground in a pose that almost seemed to mock a prayer. Before I knew it, it'd turned into a giant, horrifying blue silhouette of a man with a crown, robe, and scepter.
A sudden chill ran down my spine as I stared at the creature. That thing was just deep in the uncanny valley.
"Rai-chan! There's something seriously wrong here!" I shouted.
"Hang on. We have another incoming signature. It's... coming in fast. Way faster than the other one."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"It's Mach 2. That's twice as fast as the other one. A quick triangulation indicates it originated from somewhere within Shoreline City.
Suddenly, a sharp explosion rocked the ground, and a burst of light erupted in the distance, sending a shockwave tearing through the air. The air around us suddenly lit up with a strange blue glow, and I felt that strange tingle in my head, like static electricity.
"Rai-chan, what the hell is going on?!" I shouted, clutching my head.
"Something's coming out of the vortex. No... multiple somethings."
In front of me, the monstrous creature began to writhe and twist in a sickening display. With each pop and crackle, its limbs elongated and contorted into grotesque shapes as they broke off like the limbs of a cremated corpse.
As its body disintegrated, tendrils of shadow and energy burst forth from its open chest, billowing like smoke from a dying fire.
A smaller, human-like figure emerged from the remains, but three glowing orbs of light surrounded it. Each orb had a distinct color—one was a deep bloody red, another a deep purple, and the third a blazing, fiery dark orange that stood out against the swirling orange vortex it had come from.
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As if commanded by some unseen force, the orange orb suddenly surged forward, shifting and transforming as it floated through the air. Its once simple form now grew, twisted, and contorted into a mass of dark energy, with two bright orange eyes that glared at me from within the darkness.
Following close behind, the two other orbs emerged from the vortex. Like the first, they were twisted amalgamations of flesh and shadow, their bodies pulsing with otherworldly energy. Despite their varying shapes and forms, they all shared one unsettling similarity – their eyes. Each one had glowing, piercing eyes that bore deep into my soul.
"Ikki... this definitely isn't a Magnitude 3.8 Chaos Event anymore," Rai-chan commented tensely, data streams scrolling across my screen.
"No kidding," I muttered, tightening my grip on the controls.
"It should frankly qualify for a Magnitude 5.7 rating. There's... there's something much bigger going on here."
The first figure finally solidified into a massive body, resembling a Balrog from the movie Lord of the Rings adaptation. It had ethereal bat-like wings that beat menacingly above me, and a distorted chuckle escaped its twisted mouth as it contorted and writhed in a frenzy of darkness and energy. Shadowy tendrils erupted from its body like a grotesque garden of thorns while its eyes burned with an unnatural orange glow.
The second orb glowed with a deep purple light before taking on the shape of a humanoid silhouette. It appeared like a fox-like giantess, with a feminine frame and nine flickering tails that fluttered gracefully in the air. The creature's hands began to spark with energy, their fingers ending in sharp talons that glinted wickedly. It held out its clawed hands, and from them, crystals of deep purple began to materialize, sparkling ominously.
The crystals grew rapidly into a magnificent gown covered in shadows, shifting and flowing like water, with each movement creating a dazzling ripple effect. I numbly realized that small rifts were beginning to form around it. It had a fur pattern reminiscent of a purple and black yukata, its face hidden behind a shadowy mourning veil, and its eyes glowing with a strange purple light behind them.
Finally, the red orb solidified into a figure that made my blood run cold. A piercing, ungodly shrieking noise echoed through the air, and a wave of crimson light erupted from the red orb.
As the light subsided, a giant shadowy mass formed in the air, hovering ominously in front of me. It began to twist and contort, and its limbs elongated and stretched like tentacles as its form shifted and changed. The figure transformed its skin, melding and remolding into deep crimson scales that seemed to glisten in the air. It was a dragon-like creature for certain, but it was just wrong.
Everything about it screamed that it wasn't meant to exist, that it was a grotesque amalgamation of disjointed parts that were anatomically incorrect. Its head was a twisted mass of bone and muscle, its eyes glowing with an intense red light that seemed to pierce right through to my soul. The wings were asymmetrical and crackled with malevolent red electricity, and its body seemed to pulsate with a deep, primal rage. Its tail ended in a razor-sharp hook, and its claws were no less fearsome – horrific, jagged things dripping with a sinister, almost radioactive red ichor.
A strange tingling sensation filled my mind as I stared up at the three creatures hovering over me as their forms solidified. It was like a buzzing, a strange, muffled noise coming from every direction. It was all so overwhelming, and my head was beginning to pound in agony. It felt like a million voices screaming in my brain, a chorus of sounds that threatened to shatter me from within.
"These energy signatures... no, they couldn't be!" Rai-chan exclaimed. "This... this is insane!"
"What… what the hell are you talking about?" I shouted in fear and panic.
She paused for a moment before responding. "All three of these are returning similar signatures to three of the four Emperor-class Aberrants that have ravaged the world in decades past. These entities... they must be some sort of imitations or derivatives."
"Wait, you're saying these creatures are... Emperor-class chaos beasts or something?"
My blood ran cold as I briefly remembered my fuzzy and terrifying childhood experience at the Fall of New York. The vague, barely-present memories of frantic panic. Of my mother's voice as she held me tightly in her arms, the ground trembling beneath us as the city was consumed by fire and shadow. Even one was more devastation than any civilization could handle. Three in one place? That was an extinction-level event.
"Not quite, Ikki," she muttered grimly. "Each of these chaos beasts is pinging back to me with exactly 15,000,000 MP units. That puts them somewhere around a high Marquis class but... they're all pinging back with exactly 15,000,000 MP units."
"Exactly 15,000,000 MP units? That's... what?"
"Yeah… it's pretty weird. And speaking of mana - you're showing all the signs of mana depletion right now, buddy," she added, her voice increasingly concerned. "I'm parsing the data now, but it looks like your drone's auxiliary systems are struggling to compensate. We're going to need to conserve our energy."
A sudden flash of bright white light in the sky caught my eye, and I glanced up just in time to see a red silhouette far in the distance, coming to a stop above us.
I gulped, trying to wrangle my fear and focus on piloting my drone. "Rai-chan, what's that?" I asked, pointing up towards the figure in the sky.
Rai-chan quickly focused my sight on a humanoid figure. It was unmistakably a girl, wearing a silver mask and emitting a striking combination of silver and red energy. She had a long, black, red hooded cloak that concealed her form but billowed gracefully in the air.
A Magical Girl?
"Who the heck is that?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.
The newcomer crossed her arms, staring down at the vortex and field below. She didn't seem to pay attention to the chaos beasts; she was fixated on something beyond the vortex. I didn't know how I could tell, but it seemed like she was looking past the 'embryo' the three monsters had just emerged from.
"Ikki, this girl... I don't know who she is, but she seems connected to whatever is happening here," Rai-chan said.
The dragon suddenly shot off the ground, rocketing up at the girl with the silver-red aura, roaring at her in a challenge. As the dragon lunged at her, the girl in the silver mask spread her arms wide, and a brilliant flash of light erupted from her cloak. The light seemed to move in slow motion, wrapping around the dragon and twisting around its body, binding it in a glittering cocoon of silver and red energy. The creature writhed and fought against the bonds, but it was useless. The girl's energy continued to fill the area, the light growing brighter and more intense.
She didn't flinch as the dragon lunged and snapped at her, her energy flickering ominously around her as she raised her right hand.
And then, a single gleaming ruby-red crystal appeared in her palm, pulsing with intense, otherworldly energy.
Then, something completely impossible happened.
The dragon froze in midair before bowing its head in submission. It was like the creature had been turned into stone; its movements were halted, and its once-fierce gaze was now vacant.
Chuckling softly, the masked newcomer floated directly in front of it, and released her bonds. A shiver found its way down my spine as I watched her slowly fly up to it. My breath caught in my throat as I noticed she was... petting the dragon. A dragon that was now as docile as a lamb.
"Coyote, Falcon. Are you two seeing this?" I asked over the comms, looking back behind me. I'd left them behind by about half a while, and Falcon's rail cannon was slack in her mech's arms.
"Yeah, it's hard to see through all this, but we see something alright. That... that's some crazy shit right there," Falcon breathed over the comms, her voice filled with awe and fear.
Rai-chan suddenly cut in, her voice urgent. "Ikki? I'm pretty sure that newcomer was the large mana signature from the west. The one coming from Shoreline City is also about to —"
Before Rai-chan could finish her sentence, a second burst of light erupted in the sky, and a bright, golden figure came hurtling through the air, stopping abruptly close to the first arrival.
The golden figure shimmered with a radiant light, contrasting sharply against the silver and red energies emanating from the mysterious girl. Their presence filled the air with an electric tension, a clash of raw power that seemed to reverberate through the air.
Her aura was too bright to make out her features, but I could see a distinct silhouette of a girl with a golden glow and long, pink-flailing hair that trailed behind her. She wielded a massive bow that crackled with golden energy, and her eyes narrowed in focused determination as she surveyed the scene before her.
The two figures stared at each other for a long moment, their auras pulsing and crackling with energy as they hovered in the air. The two Magical Girls were now face to face, eye to eye, their gazes locked in a silent clash of power.
My gaze drew back to the vortex and the two creatures taking shape before it. The balrog-like creature had completely solidified into a massive humanoid shape with massive, bat-like wings. Its face was shrouded in shadow and light, but I could see a mocking grin flickering at its shadowy mouth. Likewise, the fox-like, hunched chaos beast was now completely solid, its form gleaming with a royal purple sheen.
Their presence alone was overwhelming, their power and influence dominating the space around them. I could feel the air vibrating with tension, the energy and emotion in the field threatening to engulf us all in a rush of energy.
The bat-like creature almost seemed to sneer at me in amusement before it ascended into the air, its massive wings beating furiously as it accelerated at a breakneck speed. Falcon reacted almost instantly out of reflex, firing her rail cannon wildly after it, but the shots went wide, missing it entirely.
The golden Magical Girl above, however, acted instantly, her massive, intricate golden bow drawn back and ready. My jaw dropped as a barrage of rapid-fire light arrows burst forth, hurtling toward the chaos beast with deadly precision in barely visible streaks of light.
But the fox-like creature simply smirked, its eerily human-like lips curling into a sinister smile. It vanished in a flash of purple light and reappeared by Falcon's side. With a swift gesture of its arms, a flurry of purple portals materialized across the field, intercepting the oncoming arrows.
The arrows were redirected through other portals scattered around the area, unleashing explosion after explosion all over the landscape.
I could only watch in horror as the balrog-like creature disappeared through a portal, which promptly closed behind it, sending it who knows where.
Falcon didn't hesitate for a second, sliding back and firing her railgun at the fox monster at a minimum safe range.
But the fox monster effortlessly raised her arms again, opening another portal that redirected the powerful blast at Falcon's vulnerable backside. A flash of green quickly filled my vision before the mech exploded in a shower of sparks and flames, sending debris flying everywhere.
"Falcon!" Coyote's anguished cry filled the air as he sprinted forward.
But he halted as he came face to face with the fox monster, frozen in his tracks under its intense gaze. It then turned its attention to me, causing me to flinch under its oppressive presence. It almost seemed to view us as insignificant insects beneath its notice - all part of some twisted game it was playing for its amusement.
Were chaos beasts even capable of calculated intelligence like that? A lot wasn't adding up, and I felt a shiver of unease.
With a palpable sense of contempt, it raised its hand once again, disappearing in a flash of purple light to appear on top of a hill nearby in our view, almost like it was daring us to try again.
The battle intensified, and I struggled to keep my composure against the mesmerizing symphony of destruction around us.
The golden Magical Girl hurtled backward in a blinding flash of shimmering gold, narrowly evading the dragon's fiery onslaught that crackled and sizzled through the air. With a lightning-fast flick of her arm, she notched an arrow and let loose a blinding, rapid-fire barrage of golden light that rented the sky with a deafening roar.
But her opponent wasn't done yet. The red Magical Girl had taken the dragon-like creature as a mount, flying at the golden Magical Girl with a glinting silver blade. They executed a flawless barrel roll in an inertia-defying maneuver, deftly skirting around the searing blasts of light. She struck out with a flash of silver, causing one of the beams to veer off course, slamming into the nearby forests. I gulped, frozen in shock as a massive explosion rocked the earth, obliterating the forest on the horizon in a blaze of pure destruction.
I gulped, still frozen in shock. This was the first time I'd seen an experienced Magical Girl outright cut loose. What I'd seen from Yomotsu-Shikome over the summer was nothing compared to the sheer power displayed here.
"Sparky! Regroup with me on Falcon!" Coyote shouted over the comms, already running towards the crippled mech.
"R-right! On my way!" I responded, snapping out of my trance and racing towards Coyote's position.
I could feel my heart racing in my chest as I reached Falcon's mech. I saw her charred and smoking mech and feared the worst.
"Falcon!" Coyote nearly screamed, rushing to the mech's half-torn cockpit and yanking it open. "Say something!"
There was a sudden crackling sound in my ears, and I could see that the damage to the mech's circuitry was extensive, the cockpit flashing with a red emergency alert on my local IFF display. Silence filled the air for a few heart-pounding moments.
Suddenly, a series of clicks echoed over the comms as Falcon's voice crackled back to life, filled with static and glitchy interference.
"Nice work, Falcon," a familiar woman's voice crackled. "Great. You'll never fucking live this down. Fucking retard."
"What are you talking about? Are you okay?" Coyote shouted frantically.
She chuckled, her voice hoarse and raspy. "Can't tell. Can't feel a thing. Think I have a concussion."
"You're not dead?!" I breathed, feeling a sense of relief wash over me.
"Not yet. That bitch better aim better next time. Fucking asshole bitch of a vixen whore," she swore.
Coyote peeled back the mess of a cockpit, and I could see a Falcon's crumpled body inside, stained with smoke and soot and streaked with blood.
"You may have come out worse for wear, but your survival instinct kicked in," Rai-chan commented over the comms. "How did you know to redirect your shields behind you?"
"Lucky guess."
Coyote and I turned both our mechs' heads at each other, sharing a glance, before staring back at her in disbelief.
"More importantly..." Rai-chan commented, highlighting the fox monster for me around 100 meters away. "We've got a problem here. A big problem. I have a pretty good hunch on what those things are."
Rai-chan's words were interrupted by a sudden blinding red light from the silver-red Magical Girl's hand. A massive sphere of pulsing energy materialized in the air, crackling with an eerie crimson glow. Cocking back a ferocious, almost exaggerated throw, the sphere hurtled towards the golden Magical Girl, who quickly flew back, erecting a wall of pink, flowery hexagons of light for protection.
But to her visible shock, the sphere of red energy bypassed the wall as if it weren't even there.
"What the fuck was that?" I breathed.
"Unless I'm completely, totally off base… That's.... the Authority of Desolation. " Rai-chan explained privately to me.
"What do you mean? Authority of Desolation?"
Rai-chan paused, stroking her chin. "The First Imperatore was reported to have an ability called Desolation, which was used to cancel out or bypass any magical and physical barriers. Even a Magical Girl's natural protective aura barely stopped the Imperatore's attacks, and those without sufficient lumina were killed almost instantly. Come to think of it, it's almost like... no. It's too much of a coincidence, and my personality matrix was barely initialized, so things are fuzzy for me. However, I do wonder if we've encountered this already."
"It can't be," I breathed, a recent memory tugging at the back of my mind.
As if on cue, the red Magical Girl raised her palm with calculated precision, and eight blazing orbs appeared around her, radiating a pulsing crimson light. Without hesitation, the golden Magical Girl followed up immediately, drawing back her bow and unleashing an onslaught of gleaming arrows that tore through the air towards her opponent. But the red Magical Girl was prepared, raising her other arm in a smooth motion to summon a shimmering red barrier. The barrier rippled briefly, effortlessly deflecting the golden Magical Girl's attack.
Undeterred, the golden Magical Girl unleashed an even more powerful wave of energy, channeling it through her bow until it formed a blinding stream of starry light that collided with the red barrier. The red Magical Girl strained against the force with one arm, trembling as she fought to hold onto her defense. In a split-second move, she thrust out her other palm and released a burst of fiery crimson energy.
The golden magical girl could barely react as the crimson energy tore through the center of her beam, slamming into her with a blinding flash. The golden Magical Girl tumbled down through the sky, hissing in agony. She desperately released pulses of pink and sparkling gold energy as the mass of shadow and red energy clung to her body.
The pair closed the distance, firing bolt after bolt at the girl with the golden aura as she desperately rolled and twisted through the air.
The buzzing sensation came back, and I clutched my head in agony as a searing pain shot through me. "Rai-chan… What's going on?"
"You're running on fumes at this point, and your natural mana isn't sufficient to block out their presence. We need to gather whatever data we can on their abilities and come up with a way to how to counter them. I'll find a workaround for your mana problem. Now, be a dear and look at the weird fox thing over there for me, would you?"
I managed to clear my vision and focus on the fox monster, seeing it staring blankly at the sky.
"You're right. There's something wrong here, Ikki. Something's... wrong. I can't explain it, but... I think I get it."
My HUD suddenly lit up over the fox monster, and I felt my heart racing as Rai-chan populated a box over it.
Aberrant Identification Name: Beast of Liminality Threat Classification: Duke Mana Signature: 15,000,000 MP units Known Traits and Abilities: Authority of Liminality
"I only had a sneaking suspicion when they appeared, but the abilities that fox thing has demonstrated are eerily reminiscent to those demonstrated by the Imperatore of Liminality. The ability to open rift portals and truly teleport through is a unique ability in our history."
"Are you saying..." I started.
"Both of these chaos beasts are utilizing abilities associated with the Emperors that led the prior Chaos Wars. I would imagine the third beast that escaped to god knows where has similar abilities going on."
My mouth went dry with fear, and my hands began to tremble on the controls.
A blinding burst of purple light erupted from the Beast of Liminality, causing me to tense up as purple portal after portal opened up all around us.
The portals seemed to multiply and expand, engulfing everything in a whirlwind of twisting energies. The air around us turned into a maelstrom of colors and shadows, making it impossible to see. Coyote covered Falcon's mech in a desperate attempt to shield her with whatever protection he could muster while I tried my best to keep my mech stable amidst the chaos.
The Beast glanced up at the raging fight between the red and golden Magical Girls, their bodies locked in brutal combat as they soared through the air. Explosions rocked the sky as energy blasts flew in all directions, and I could see the golden Magical Girl was struggling to keep up now. The golden Magical Girl looked almost drunk in flight, swaying erratically as her powers faltered. However, the red Magical Girl was relentless, her attacks growing more and more ferocious.
She narrowly dodged a diagonal slash from the red Magical Girl, who'd separated from the dragon. The red Magical Girl, seemingly enjoying the confusion, began to dance around her opponent in the air, with rotating red orbs around her pulsating in time with her movements.
Seeing an opening, the golden Magical Girl summoned forth a veritable storm of golden light, surrounding herself in its center as the dragon flew around her, breathing a flash of sickly red lightning at her from behind. The red Magical rushed at her from up front, and she threw up a barrier of pure mana. However, the red Magical Girl seemed to laugh at her attempt as she effortlessly dispersed the barrier with a swing of her silver blade, leaving the golden girl exposed once more.
Down by the ground, the Beast of Liminality finally turned to face us, its twisted grin exposing razor-sharp fangs that glint in the dim light. My body trembled uncontrollably as I watched the creature, feeling a primal fear deep in my bones.
"Sparky! Stay sharp!" Coyote suddenly yelled, ripping the cockpit out of Falcon's mech and diving into a roll to the side.
I jerked back on the controls out of instinct, narrowly avoiding a portal that opened up right in front of me, immediately firing a spear. I quickly ducked as another one that appeared behind me and fired as well. Each of the spears immediately ricocheted through a portal, keeping me on my toes as I dashed around the field.
My heart raced as I frantically maneuvered around the field, struggling to keep up with the unpredictable attacks. "Rai-chan, what are these things?"
"If they're anything like what the Second Imperatore was capable of... we're in serious trouble. But I'm analyzing the data we just collected from our scan, and there may be a way to—"
The ground beneath us shook violently as a deafening explosion ripped through the air. A blinding burst of crimson energy erupted in the distance, its fierce shockwave racing towards us like a tidal wave. Amidst the chaos, a chilling scream echoed through the air, its echoes sending shivers down my spine and filling me with an all-consuming fear.
Time seemed to stand still for a moment as we watched the golden Magical Girl tossed through the sky like a rag doll, her body contorted and battered by the powerful collision of shadowy darkness and searing red energy. The raw power emanating from the explosion sent chills down my spine, making it hard to breathe. The golden Magical Girl's desperate cries were drowned out as she fought to regain control of her flight against the howling wind and crackling energy.
I cringed as even more portals opened up around me, and I felt a sense of dread creeping over me as bright blue-purple spears of crystal materialized from thin air, aiming toward the girl above. Portal after portal opened up, each one preparing to fire a spear of purple crystal. Their deadly points glinted ominously in the dim light before erupting into a shadowy flame. They were all aimed toward the golden Magical Girl, and she was too beaten up to notice. The red Magical Girl paused in the air as if gloating at her opponent's helplessness.
With each passing moment, the spears of purple crystal grew increasingly numerous, and the golden Magical Girl's predicament became increasingly dire. I found myself unable to look away; the unfolding tragedy had captured me in its grip. The golden girl's eyes were wide with terror, and she tried in vain to evade the onslaught, but the portals kept coming, each prepared to send forth a new crystal spear to pierce her fragile form.
In a surge of panic, I yanked hard on the controls, pushing the mech into a desperate sprint towards the Beast of Liminality. The field was a chaotic mess of swirling portals, blinding lights, and deadly energy, but I couldn't just stand by and watch her get turned into a pincushion.
"Rai-chan! I need you to speed up my time perception!" I shouted, pushing the mech into a desperate sprint towards the Beast of Liminality.
"You're already in a state of mana exhaustion. Modifying your perception now is—" she paused, before sighing. "Fine Brace yourself."
Fear and determination surged through me as I charged headlong into the chaos. The portals swirled around me, the deadly crystal spears poised to strike the helpless golden Magical Girl. The Beast of Liminality's mocking fanged grin loomed larger in my view, its eyes glowing with sinister amusement.
Just as I reached the creature, a searing pain shot through my head. My vision blurred, and everything seemed to slow down. The world around me became a distorted, agonizing blur of light and shadow.
My heart pounded in my chest as the Beast's eyes turned slightly, locking onto my mech. It flicked a hand dismissively, and a dozen purple portals encircled me in a lattice, each crackling with that shadowy, deadly energy.
Time seemed to stand still as the crystal spears aimed to skewer me in one final, fatal blow. With every muscle tensed, I fought to find a way out, but the Beast of Liminality's overwhelming power pressed in on me from all sides.
"Ik...ki!" Rai-chan's voice rang in my ears, desperate and urgent, but I tuned her out.
The spears closed in, a blur of deadly light, and I braced myself. The only thing I could focus on was the whir my beam saber filling the air as I activated it in desperation.
Come on!